


Moon Song

by suitesamba



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, As Time Goes By - Freeform, Family, Growing Old Together, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:46:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: At forty-five Harry knows these truths – that a lifetime isn’t long enough to spend with Severus, and that it doesn’t matter a whit what anyone else has to say about it.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 40
Kudos: 395





	Moon Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badgerlady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerlady/gifts).



> This work was written for my friend badgerlady, who deserves something back for all the commas and hyphens she moves around for the Snape Potter community. Happiest of holidays and health and happiness to you and yours in 2020.

A child of one, he cries in his cot, his room in wreckage, his mother’s green eyes no longer warm with love. The arms that lift him at last are strong, and he clings to the unfamiliar robes, burying his head on a bony shoulder, too tired to push away from the strange texture. He scrunches his eyes against the pain in his forehead, squirms in the soiled nappy, whimpers into sleep with small hands clutching folds of black.

He dreams of twinkling blue eyes, moonlight and lemon drops. He flies through the silver stars on the wings of a gentle giant, falls asleep to the thrum of an unfamiliar heartbeat, and wakes into a different world.

He is no longer someone’s son. Someone’s world. Someone’s miracle.

(He is everyone’s hope.)

He is four years old. He doesn’t recall a mother, or a father, or a comfortable cottage. He doesn’t remember warm hugs, butterfly kisses, or bedtime stories. His home is a cupboard under the stairs, and the door of the cupboard opens up onto the rest of his world.

He quite prefers the cupboard.

He plays with broken toys and draws pictures with the stubs of crayons his aunt throws in the bin. He scribbles on torn envelopes and crumpled grocery bags. He draws spiders, and moths, and the birds that pull worms from the earth in the garden. He draws clouds in the sky, and rows of houses, all exactly alike, and once, he puts God on a cloud – with a kind smile, and golden glasses, and a long white beard and beautiful robes of robin blue.

Aunt Petunia shrieks when she finds the picture stuck to the wall in the cupboard, and she crumples it up and bins it, and calls him a freak, and takes away his crayons.

He finds more, of course, and is very careful to hide them.

He is seven years old and it is Christmas. The vicar has come, and Aunt Petunia has scrubbed him down in the bathtub and dressed him in his best faded jeans and too-large sweatshirt. She’s stuck his messy hair down with sticky gel and made him sit on a wooden chair in the living room all by himself for hours so he won’t get himself dirty.

He needs the loo but knows better than to call out to her or to leave his seat. His hair begins to disobey Aunt Petunia’s strict rules, spiking up one gel-slick strand at a time, causing the vicar to grin and Aunt Petunia to scowl.

He holds it in until the vicar is escorted to the door, praising the Dursleys for their kindness and charity, but cannot hold it a second longer and wets himself as he runs to the loo.

Aunt Petunia makes him wash out his clothes outside with the garden hose. 

It is dark but for the moon, and he stares at it and wishes he were on it, way out there in the middle of nowhere, with no vicars, and no aunts, and no gel in his hair. He imagines a flying motorcycle to transport him there, and a mum to sing him a moonlight lullaby.

Aunt Petunia hisses at him to come inside, and he bids a reluctant goodbye to the moon and tries not to drip water on the spic and span clean kitchen floor.

He is eleven years old and his world has turned upside down and backward. He is trotting along beside a giant in a magical world of old-fashioned shops and flying brooms and red-headed children. He has a wand now, and robes, and books with moving pictures. 

He takes a train to a castle and falls asleep that first night in a real four-poster bed with curtains and clean sheets and warm blankets. He is happier than he’s ever been. He has a friend – a real friend – and people _know_ him – he’s famous for being Harry Potter. He has no foresight – he doesn’t see what is not yet come – and he closes his eyes as the moonlight bathes the room in gold.

He doesn’t see the scowling man in black slip inside the Headmaster’s office. He doesn’t know what wheels his arrival has set in motion, what plans are being made, what risks are being taken. 

He won’t know for many years what Severus Snape sees when he looks at Harry, what he sees when Harry looks at him. 

And when he does know, at last, he won’t fully understand.

He’s never had a mother, after all. And he’s never been in love.

He’s fifteen. His godfather – Sirius – is dead. He’s numb with grief, insane with rage. He’s lost the only parent he’s ever known, his dad’s best friend.

He lashes out and Dumbledore sits there and absorbs it all.

Severus Snape had a friend once, too. He lost her and he was numb with grief, insane with rage.

Dumbledore does not absorb his rage. Dumbledore uses it, focused and channeled, and presses from Severus Snape a promise.

Against all odds, the boy is alive. Snape cleans up the wreckage of Dumbledore’s office and knows he would trade the boy in a heartbeat for a glimpse of his mother’s shadow.

He’s seventeen and the world is a black hole, collapsing upon him, gravity pulling him in so that he can barely lift his tired feet.

He stands over Severus Snape’s crumpled form, staring into his fathomless eyes while wisps of memories seep from his pores. His hands cover the man’s throat while Ron, choking back the vomit that wants to spill, wraps the cloth Hermione hands him around the tattered wreckage of his throat. 

_Look at me._

He can’t help but look. He’s seen enough death these past years to know what he’s looking at now. But still, his slippery hands hold firm, only easing out of the way to allow Ron to continue wrapping while Hermione roots through the bag for the Dittany, for a miracle cure-all potion that will neutralize the venom, restore lost blood and knit together the tattered remains of throat and esophagus.

 _Esophagus_. He’s seen a man’s esophagus. 

Hermione pries his hands away and presses a crystal vial in them. He nearly drops it, distractedly wipes his hands on his pants.

He’ll have to rinse them with the garden hose when this nightmare is over, climb to the moon and sleep on the dark side until the bone-weary fatigue is no more.

 _Go_ , she says. Her eyes tell him it is hopeless but still he must try.

He’s eighteen.

He celebrates his birthday at Hogwarts with the Weasleys, Hagrid, Andromeda and Teddy, Minerva and the other professors who survived. They play Quidditch on the pitch, eat a feast in the tattered remains of the Great Hall, and later, someone spikes the punch. They blame the house-elves, and dance in the moonlight, and it is a tiny spot of normal in a decidedly not-normal year.

The Headmaster stands at the door but does not enter – he’s steady on his feet now, but slow, and very cautious. This is the first time Harry’s seen him up and about since the final battle. He’d returned the memories to him once he’d been assured the Headmaster would recover. He’d returned them reluctantly, but resolutely, with a simple thank you, a quiet but firmly voiced _I could never have done it without you._

The words are simple, but heartfelt, and Severus gives a curt nod and closes his eyes.

No one sees him slip the alcohol into the punch, but he thinks the boy, and the party, could stand to let go of a few inhibitions.

After all, Harry Potter is eighteen now. Practically all grown up.

He’s twenty-four. 

He holds the tiny baby in his arms, as exhausted as his best friends who watch him as he gazes at the child with wonder and awe.

“She’s perfect,” he announces. He stares at her face, memorizing her tiny features.

“You’ll have one before you know it,” Ron says. He stands behind Harry and looks down at his daughter, presses a finger into her fist. She grasps it and Harry cannot fathom how small she is, how small and complete and utterly perfect.

Harry shakes his head. “She’ll do for now,” he says with a smile.

He’s twenty-eight.

He’s a skilled Auror. A favorite uncle. An adored godfather. A much-loved friend.

He has a cottage in Hogsmeade, a crup named Snuffles and plays rugby in London with Dudley’s team every other Saturday.

One Wednesday, he’s sent to Hogwarts. It’s Career Day, and the school has requested an Auror. Harry draws the short straw.

He’s the fourth speaker, just before lunch. The Great Hall is crowded with students. Word’s gone around that Harry Potter is at Hogwarts and younger students with the period free come to listen too. He begins by asking the students to raise their hands if they like reading assignments from their textbooks. To raise them again if they like writing essays. Then he asks everyone who was considering becoming an Auror to do the same. He proceeds to tell them that Auror work is a lot like doing homework. Sure there was excitement, and danger, but there was a lot of ordinary office work, and report writing, and reading files. He tells them that his wand is his weapon, but he has to depend on his mind and his body first and a wand is pretty much useless if you’re not quick on your feet and in good physical condition.

The floor is opened for questions, and they want to know what his favorite class was (Defense) and his favorite teacher (Remus Lupin) and what he was pants at (Divination). Someone asks to see his scar, so he pulls up his sleeve and shows them an ugly red slash on his upper arm and everyone laughs.

They ask him to stay for lunch, and he finds himself sitting between the Headmaster and his Deputy. 

Severus Snape cuts his meat into very small pieces and chews them meticulously. He passes on the collard greens and brussels sprouts. He takes black coffee with his pudding. He doesn’t say much, but Minerva has a hundred questions, and he snorts when she asks him – as everyone eventually does – whether he’s seeing anyone now.

“If Harry Potter were seeing anyone, you ‘d have read it in the _Prophet_ already, Minerva. And just how do you suppose he’d have time for dating with all those reports he’s been writing?”

Harry can’t help but grin and Severus Snape rolls his eyes and starts in on his pudding.

He’s twenty-nine.

On Fridays, he meets Severus Snape at the Three Broomsticks for dinner and walks back with him to the gates of Hogwarts after.

He’s been watching Severus Snape for more than a year, thinking about him for even longer.

They don’t fill every silent patch with words. Sometimes, they don’t speak words at all. Sometimes the moon is enough to fill the night.

Side by side. Shoulder to shoulder. Hands at their sides.

No one pays them any mind at all. There are brighter stars, bigger names, more beautiful people. Draco Malfoy and his newborn son. Ginny Weasley and her record-breaking goal count. Gilda Von Habel and her cure for Spattergroit. 

One night, they drink a bottle of wine and when they reach the gate, Severus invites Harry up for coffee. He presents it as an afterthought, and perhaps it is.

Harry accepts with a smile.

There is something oddly familiar and comforting in the feel, the smell of the robes beneath his cheek as he rests his head against Severus as they lay on the sofa in a surprising tangle of limbs.

The moon is low in the horizon when he heads back home, hands in his pockets, walking on air.

He’s thirty-two.

He tries to explain it to Ron, to Hermione, to Ginny, to Molly, to Andromeda, to anyone who asks, who will sit down and just bloody _listen_ to him a moment.

Except that when he opens his mouth, when he tries to explain why this – this thing with Severus – is better than a wife, a family of his own, a cottage in the country with a Quidditch Pitch out back, the words won’t come.

They mean well. They do. They love him. 

_Severus loves him._

Severus loves him while still being Severus. He is not tender, nor particularly giving. He can be coarse, and rude, and somewhat reclusive. He is stubborn as an ox, convinced he is always right. 

He lets Harry be.

He doesn’t tell Harry that he worries about him when he’s off on a case and doesn’t hear from him for days on end. 

(He does worry. Harry sees it in his eyes when he returns. Tastes the relief on his lips.)

He doesn’t berate Harry when he comes home with scrapes and bruises from his Saturday rugby matches. Isn’t jealous when he goes out with old friends – even Ginny. 

And if Harry chooses to spend every June 30th at Dumbledore’s tomb, sitting cross-legged on the grass with his back against the cool marble, writing in a notebook, Severus doesn’t bother him with offers of sandwiches and cool lemonade. He understands, as only he can, that Harry’s youth, his innocence, already so compromised, were irrevocably lost the night that Albus died. That Harry may never work through it. That perhaps he already has and chooses to spend the last day of June with Albus to remind himself of what was gained by his sacrifice.

Or perhaps not.

Harry is forty.

He cannot muster a tear for the woman in the casket. 

He hasn’t been inside her house for more than twenty years. It’s Dudley’s now, and he goes with his cousin after the services. Dudley’s found a trunk of old family photos and he wants Harry to have some.

Of course. Of _course_ there are photos of Severus and Lily.

They are treasures, each and every one. Preserved, untouched, in a trunk in the attic, they confirm a somber truth, written in the memories Severus has shared so long ago.

There is a boy of seven, in too-large, out-of-style clothing. He sits beside the girl, looking uncomfortable and out-of-place. Her arm is slung around his shoulders and she grins at the camera, looking for all the world like she’ll live forever, and grow up to take on the world. 

(She’s too young to understand the games fate plays.)

He is accustomed to seeing photographs in motion and it is refreshing, for a change, to stare at these. Still-lifes, slices of moments in time. Photos that don’t stare back, subjects that don’t duck out of sight or blow raspberries. He feels more historian and less voyeur this way and would sit there and study them forever, but Dudley is tired after this trying day and asks Harry to lock up when he’s done.

Harry gathers up the photos and shrinks the trunk. He peaks into his old bedroom. It’s a guestroom now, pristine and sterile. He continues down the stairs and something draws him to the other place. He pulls open the door and stands there, staring into this smallest of places. He is reminded suddenly of Kreacher, of a hidey hole for a house-elf and the comparison is spot-on. He is half-tempted to step inside, to crouch down on the floor and wrap his arms around his knees. 

He does not.

He backs away, closes the door.

He had an argument once with Severus – years ago, after he’d said he’d be a horrible father.

Severus, out of character, had taken issue with the statement. Had argued that Harry would be an exceptional father. That he put others’ needs before his own. That he was kind and had an enormous capacity to love. 

And while he appreciated that Severus thought that way, he knew he was wrong.

He’d smother a child. He’d be overprotective. He’d vow that nothing bad would happen to the child – not ever. His child would be scared of her own shadow, rooted to the spot, incapable of growing wings. He’d never be able to let go when the time came. Never be able to punish the child for wrongdoings. Never let her ride a broom, much less a hippogriff or a dragon.

Ginny had suggested once that he used this excuse to justify his life with Severus.

But for his part, he wonders how people can go into becoming parents so lightly, so casually. Sometimes without much forethought at all.

And he doesn’t need to justify his life with Severus. It’s _his_ life, after all.

And at forty, Harry Potter knows what he wants.

He’s forty-five.

They’re at the Burrow for Christmas – Severus gets a wild hair and announces he’s coming along every half dozen years or so. 

Harry lets him be. He doesn’t ask him to mingle, or to not comment on Ginny’s much younger new husband. Severus hides in a corner playing chess with Ron before sitting down with the dragon tamer with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon between them.

No one thinks they have much in common. Harry wrestles on the floor with the little ones, goes out in the cold for a pick-up game of Quidditch, joins in the general chaos of setting up the tables and arranging the napkins and cutlery. He’s wearing last year’s Christmas jumper and drinking eggnog, a bit happier this year because Severus has come, but only a bit happier, a bit more jovial, than usual.

Severus doesn’t wrestle on the floor with the children – he’s the headmaster of Hogwarts, after all. But the idea that his life is all potions and buttons is preposterous. He loves the ocean – the wild, craggy shores, not the beach and sand and certainly not the sun. He loves science fiction, and Kentucky bourbon, and abstract art. He’s a firm believer in hand-written correspondence. He’s sent an owl to Molly, in fact, to let her know he’d be accompanying Harry at Christmas this year. He likes order in his life, but does not pick up after Harry, or force his strict clothing folding regimen on him.

They both love walks in the hills, collecting ingredients in the forest, and relaxing at the cabin no one knows they own, on a Scottish loch not too far from Hogwarts, but just exactly far enough.

At forty-five Harry knows these truths – that a lifetime isn’t long enough to spend with Severus, and that it doesn’t matter a whit what anyone else has to say about it.

He’s sixty-four.

His early life was full of tragedy, his middle life a long, slow, glorious glide from beginning to end. The deaths that start to come later are not tragic, but they hurt and soothe like a bittersweet balm.

Minerva fades away one night in her sleep. She’s buried in the churchyard in Godric’s Hollow. Severus has cancelled classes for the day, and the churchyard is overflowing with students and teachers and Ministry officials, and each and every surviving member of the Order of the Phoenix. They cover her feet with her tartan, place her wand in her hand, and Ollivander, in public for the first time in a decade, drops a phoenix feather in her casket. It drifts down, fiery red, and lands on her breast, a talisman against the evil they fought. And Harry, robed and bearded and hair turning silver, recalls Fawkes, and imagines he hears the trill of the bird that saved him so many times, the gripping, poignant song that evokes the colorful chaos of his childhood. 

He doubts he’ll ever hear that song again, but it remains in his heart and soul, a brand against fear and hopelessness. His eyes scan the clouds out of habit, but the song remains but a memory. 

Severus catches him looking and smiles forlornly. He wanders off after the service, and Harry finds him at Lily’s grave.

“It is unproductive to grieve the dead in churchyards,” he quietly states. “When my time comes, you may cremate me and feed me to the giant squid.”

It is not the first time he’s spoken of his death, or assumed he’ll go before Harry. He has suggested being buried in Hagrid’s pumpkin patch, or left on the Astronomy Tower to scare off young lovers.

Harry reminds him that the squid likes his food raw, not burnt, and Severus hums and seems to consider the idea.

He’s seventy-five.

The Boy Who Lived wonders what he’s going to do when this is over.

When Severus won’t be able to lift himself out of bed. When his gnarled and damaged throat won’t allow even the soft foods to pass. When the stresses of a hard life lived and impossible battles won overtake him. When the fathomless eyes lose their depth.

Severus has ideas.

Find someone else. A companion in life, at least. Explore America with Teddy. Whisper at dragons with Charlie. Join Hermione’s efforts to clean up Azkaban. Tame a hippogriff and fly to the moon.

He makes a list, nearly illegible with his fading eyes and trembling hands.

_Get a cat._

Harry smiles and thinks it’s probably not a bad idea at all.

_Get on the Board of Governors and do something about that idiot McCormick._

Merlin. Severus has a point on that one. He makes a mental note to nominate Hermione.

_Shave off that beard._

Harry shakes his head fondly. He grew it for Severus, kept it for Severus, but has grown rather fond of it of late. It hides his wrinkles and brings the attention back to his eyes.

 _Write your memoir._ Then, in very small letters that are even more difficult to read. _I’ve written the first three chapters for you. They happened before you were born. You’ll find them soon enough._

The list is on its seventh page already. Harry looks at it with a deep pang of regret. All these things – all these things Severus wants him to do…after. Because he wouldn’t do them now, and never thought of doing them before.

“Bring it to me,” Severus rasps from the reclined chair where he spends so many hours.

Harry stands to fetch the list, and the lap desk, and the Muggle pen which is so much easier for Severus to manage than the old-fashioned quill and ink bottle. Severus scoffs at the pen but takes it nonetheless and begins the laborious process of scratching out a new item. Harry looks over Severus’ shoulder as he writes, leans down to kiss the wrinkled cheek, tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

“Do you really want me to invite someone else to the cottage, Severus?” he quietly asks. They haven’t gone there for more than a year, ever since Apparition, even side-along, became too taxing for Severus.

“You love the cottage,” Severus says, his voice not much more than a rough whisper. “You won’t stop loving it when I am gone.”

He’s right, of course. 

He won’t stop loving the cottage, or summer mornings on the shores of the loch. He won’t stop loving walks in the woods, games of chess with Ron, or wrestling on the floor with Ron and Hermione’s grandchildren. He won’t stop boiling enough water for tea for two, or sleeping on his side of the bed, or buying skim milk even though he prefers whole.

 _And I won’t stop loving you,_ , Harry thinks as he watches Severus’ silver head nod as he falls into sleep again, no doubt dreaming up new to-dos for Harry’s list. It is winter, and the moonlight spills into the room from the enchanted ceiling, a final gift from Minerva and Fillius a dozen years before. _I’ll never stop loving you._


End file.
